“It was chaos,” says Ann Arbor immigration lawyer Vicky Farah. While the courts have been pulling apart President Trump’s executive order barring citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries from the United States, Farah’s been dealing with the human fallout.
Supposedly imposed for security reasons, the ban instead hit people like a Wayne State prof from Iran. A Farah client, he has a visa allowing him to work here, and he’s applied for a green card–he’s currently being vetted by Homeland Security. Though he’s been invited to speak at an international conference this summer, Farah advised him not to leave the country.
More vulnerable are people from war-torn countries who entered the U.S. with “temporary protected status.” That’s not even a legal status, Farah says–it just means that “nobody is going to enforce their departure.” Now people from Syria, Somalia, and other countries are “terrified,” she says, “because TPS [has to be] renewed … They don’t know what to do.”
As the Observer went to press, judges around the country had suspended all or part of Trump’s order–but the administration was already planning to issue a new one.
